Dire energy predictions

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Posted by Granville Williams

In the Afterword to Shafted, published by the CPBF for the 25th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners' strike we quote Dave Feickert, previously with the NUM and now an energy consultant: 'Since 1979 the UK has not had an energy policy. And now it is almost too late.'

The Economist, 8 August 2009, has a leader and article, 'How long till the lights go out?' and 'Dark days ahead' which show how disastrous things are likely to be unless there is a drastic change in the way politicians tackle the looming energy crisis:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14167834
and

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14177328

Andy Beckett reminds us in his recent book When The Lights Went Out: Britain in The Seventies, that the last major power cuts were as a result of the miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974. Under the Labour governments which followed Edward Heath's defeat in the February 1974 general election, from 1974-1979 there was a Plan for Coal which involved research into clean coal technology and investment in advanced mining engineering technology. Tony Benn, who was Secretary of State for Energy from 1975, passionately believed that the nation's energy supplies should be under public ownership (and still does – see his Foreword to Shafted).

Under the Conservative governments of Thatcher and Major the coal industry was savaged, and the state divested itself of control of the energy industry, with power plants privatised and a competitive internal electricity market set up. The result has been the rapid deletion of North Sea gas as gas-fired power stations were built and households used it for cooking and eating.

For three decades the reliance on the market has been disastrous.

The Economist predicts, 'Britain, the only big west European country that could have joined the oil producers' club OPEC, the country that used to lecture the world about energy liberalisation, is heading towards South African-style power cuts, with homes and factories plunged intermittently into third-world darkness'.

When the lights go out again it will be because both the Tories and New Labour put their faith in the market, rather than maintaining state control of the key utilities.

BE THERE!

The Miners' Strike and Politics Today

Friday, 30 October 2009, 7.00-10.45 pm

College of Pharmacy, Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX

Ken Loach's Which Side Are You On?

Introduced by Tony Benn

Other speakers:

John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine Playwright Lee Hall (Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters)

Photographer Marc Vallée & Guardian journalist Paul Lewis

Admission £5 Book online at www.cpbf.org.uk

DATELINE: 25 January, 2010

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